THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE
AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS
(1979 — 1985):
FROM AFROCENTRISM TO EUROCENTRISM?

Apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union, while ideologically and
politically very different, and existing geographically far apart, have shared the curious
misfortune of both having disintegrated roughly at the same time — around 1990. While
much has been written on the decline of both these systems, particularly during the 1980s,
relatively little has been written about how these simultaneous declines converged upon
each other, particularly within a general ideological framework. This is partly because
little has been published in terms of ideological analysis, dealing with South Africa
during this period. The African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa provides an
obvious starting point for such an analysis since it was for several decades closely
supported by, and thus involved with, the Soviet Union, at a time when official relations
between Moscow and Pretoria were virtually non-existent.

By earlier rejecting international capitalism (for example through its
1955 Freedom Charter), the ANC had hoped to transform South Africa into a so-called “non
aligned” Third World country. It was hoped that its relative economic independence would
permit it to simultaneously enjoy political independence, which, as the movement's name
implied, would have been strongly Afrocentric. This paper will argue that the ANC,
particularly during the period 1979 to 1985, was forced fundamentally to begin to
reorientate its foreign policy, from being an ally of the Soviet Bloc to increasingly
becoming a willing partner, albeit a small one, of the international capitalist world.
There were perhaps two fundamental reasons for this foreign policy change, one domestic
and the other, international.

Domestically, under the growing pressures of economic stagnation from
about 1975, the South African state began systematically to dismantle its costly apartheid
controls, while still hoping to preserve white rule. In particular, homeland, including
influx controls, over the African townships began to be loosened. This change of policy
would provide the ANC with the opportunity to infiltrate these townships and once again
establish zones of influence there, as it had originally done prior to 1960 — but now to
do so in conditions of greater political opportunity. In 1979, in a basic document known
as the “Green Book,” this policy was officially endorsed by the ANC leadership. While
guerrilla warfare, in operation since 1961, would continue and perforce still rely on
Soviet aid, this aid, itself would become a smaller part of the picture. For, along with
newly launched urban guerrilla tactics, the ANC now allied itself to political front
organisations, such as the United Democratic Front (UDF) and township civic organisations,
themselves not directly linked to Soviet support.

Internationally, the Soviet Union, itself a committed patron of the ANC
since at least the early 1960s, was likewise beginning to reconsider its own foreign
policy towards the Third World. Like the ANC, during the early 1980s, the USSR was
becoming disillusioned with its heavy commitment towards anti capitalist allies in Africa,
Asia and Latin America. Its own worsening economic problems, moreover, were drawing it to
increasing accommodation with the ever more rapidly growing economies of the capitalist
West. Thus Moscow would ultimately tacitly condone the ANC’s foreign policy
reorientation towards the West, during this same period, if only because this
reorientation was actually paralleling her own.

1.The watershed of the 1970s: apartheid and South African economic
decline

South African apartheid policy was distinguished from the previous, early
twentieth century policy of racial segregation by its systems of homelands or
“bantustans” — allegedly politically autonomous or even independent states, each
with its own apparent ethnic identity. After 1948, these were created from “reserves”,
or segregated land in the countryside, set apart earlier for Africans. All Africans,
including those domiciled in the townships of the South African heartland (outside the
homelands) were automatically obliged, at least legally, to belong to one of these
homelands according to the particular individual’s ascribed ethnic or “tribal”
origins. A key function of the homelands thus was to control the urban townships. The
Group Areas Act of 1950 provided for the first time an effective, state controlled system
of urban segregation. It corollary was the Native Laws Amendment Act of 1952, itself
providing for effective influx control for Africans moving between homelands and
townships.1

With the development of large-scale manufacturing, made possible by a
massive domestic steel-and-electricity industrial revolution from the 1930s,2
many Africans had been attracted to the new urban job markets. Manufacturing, furthermore,
permitted a relatively permanent and residentially stable African labour force, involving
not only the workers themselves but also their families.

It was in fact the rapid growth of the urban African population and its
consequent political radicalisation during the second half of the 1940s, with its
potential long-term threat to urban stability, which would bring about apartheid. In
particular, the radicalisation of the ANC during the late 1940s, in conjunction with the
activities of the South African Communist Party (SACP), appeared to provide leadership for
any potential mass urban insurrection,3 at least in the long run.

The new form of urban planning which group areas and influx control
represented, revealed a growing government preoccupation with the need to control urban
revolt. Townships were segregated to isolate the inhabitants so that any riot or rebellion
could easily be cordoned off. Streets were built in rigid parallel and perpendicular
formation to make them easily accessible to armoured cars in case of insurrection.4

From about 1975, however, there began a sudden and ever more rapid
loosening of homeland controls over the African urban townships, symptomising the erosion
of apartheid.5 Apart-heid became discredited, even among its most ardent
supporters, and not only because of its alleged “internal contradictions”.6
More to the point, it could not adapt to South Africa’s suddenly noticeable long-term
economic decline7 as a result of unexpected long term changes in the world
economy. Temporarily higher prices for gold were more than outweighed by the oil price
rise of 1973 (which would last thirteen years) and the general stagnation in western
imports and investment for the rest of the decade.8

In the long term, steadily worsening terms of trade for primary products
and greatly increasing competitiveness for high technology imports would cause growing
pressure, already during the 1970s, for a free-market economy no longer restricted by
costly apartheid controls. In particular, the need for skilled manpower in manufacturing
became far more acute than before.9 The black labour force had to be trained
and, parallel with this, a black middle class allowed to grow. Both requirements were
incompatible with institutionalised racial segregation and an economy based on cheap, and
therefore regimented black labour.

However, the political price of removing apartheid controls would be high.
If the homelands until then had served to insulate the townships from ANC influence, so
the growth of township independence as a result of the erosion of home-land controls would
be accompanied by a resurgence of the ANC as a force in the townships. The state's
attempts to continue banning the ANC could not but be undermined by its simultaneous
dismantling of the very apartheid infra-structure needed to keep the movement under
control. Apartheid, in other words, could not be “reformed”. It could only be
undermined and with it, ultimately white rule, itself.

2.The transformation of the ANC (1979-1983)

The ANC's turn to guerrilla warfare in 1961, itself a reaction to the
organisation's banning one year earlier by the apartheid National Party government, made
it necessary for the organisation to establish strong diplomatic and military ties with
the Soviet Bloc.10 From the beginning, it had been decided to wage guerrilla
warfare from bases located outside South Africa and whose terrain of operations would be
primarily in the South African rural areas. Not before 1979 at the earliest, with the
gradual loosening of apartheid controls, would the ANC be able to change its policy to one
of launching guerrilla war primarily in the townships and general urban areas.

The sudden and dramatic Portuguese decolonisation of Angola and Mozambique
in 1974, was followed by the rapid instal-lation of pro Soviet governments in both
countries. For the first time, it became possible to infiltrate with some degree of
success, guerrillas into South Africa. Simultaneously, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the ANC
guerilla wing, began to develop urban guerrilla cells. However, the ANC still saw this as
largely an extension of rural guerrilla warfare,11 with the towns still playing
an ancillary role.

Similarly, although the 1976 Soweto uprising appeared as a challenge to
MK's traditional predominantly rural and military orientation, in fact, there was to be no
attempt on behalf of the ANC to change strategy for more than another two years. Soweto,
like the earlier Portuguese decoloni-sation of Mozambique and Angola, was interpreted by
MK as serving primarily to increase its opportunities of launching more guerrilla
incursions into South Africa. Urban incursions, themselves, were meant to be short term
and seen by the ANC in military rather than in political terms.12 The ANC's
fundamental outlook would in fact only begin to change as a result of the decline of
apartheid controls over African townships, during the second half of the 1970’s.

It was not until 1979, in a report to the ANC National Executive Committee
(the so-called “Green Book),” that a definite change in policy would occur. Firstly,
guerrilla warfare was from now on to assume a predominantly urban township orientation.
Secondly, instead of being primarily a military concept, guerrilla warfare would now
emphasise a much broader spectrum of insurgency, including most notably links to legal and
semi-legal mass organisations.13

The ANC sought in particular to identify itself with the newly formed
township civic associations which appear to have been strongly influenced by their middle
class constituents.14 It has been suggested in fact that “civics were seen as
representing the ‘community’, which meant the stronger, more articulate and educated,
less cautious township residents”.15 The civics not only formed a natural
opposition force to the government but also represented the most influential grass roots
township organisations.

The long term significance of this new alliance can not be over-estimated.
Such an alliance would entail the ANC’s transformation into an organisation of
predominantly middle class, as opposed to multi-class, orientation. The effect would be
the scaling-down of the ANC’s institutional ties with organised labour. These ties,
predominantly through the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), had, for the
previous quarter of a century, been so close as to be symbiotic, forming an organic whole.

The founding of the UDF in 1983 would be the result of the alliance
between the ANC and the township civics. This, in turn, would entail a far reaching
reinterpretation of the original ANC Freedom Charter, a document in many respects
comprising the basic tenets of the ANC’s ideological outlook for the quarter of a
century after 1955. The original Freedom Charter had supported a multi-class alliance
between the black middle classes and black organised labour.16 It will, on the
other hand, be argued that by 1983, the UDF would be interpreting the Freedom Charter in a
direction more relevant to the middle classes and less to the needs of organised labour.
In turn, this would make the ANC’s own position increasingly less incompatible with that
of international capitalism. The alliance of interests with the Soviet Union, so evident
for the past twenty years, would as a result lose its original raison d’être.

3.The ANC’s transformation and the reinterpretation of the
Freedom Charter

The Freedom Charter has been described as non socialist and as moderate on
economic issues. And yet it in fact advocated a far reaching, radical restructuring of the
South African economy at the expense of large scale domestic white and foreign capitalist
interests.17 This policy, involving widespread economic nationalisation, would
have removed competition from both domestic and multinational interests and as such have
benefited small African entrepreneurs, and not just the working classes. Politically, it
would have also meant the substantial loosening of ties between South Africa and (western)
international capitalist economies.18 In marked contrast, the ANC's strategy of
overthrowing white rule, from the 1980s, would be greatly facilitated by the support of
international and also national capitalism. The coming to power of ANC rule, by this
scenario, could only serve to reintegrate an increasingly beleaguered South Africa into
the international capitalist world.

The Freedom Charter envisaged joining the so-called “non aligned” bloc
of countries, such as Egypt India, Indonesia and Ghana.19 All such societies
maintained multi-class societies, including their native bourgeoisie. In particular, they
subscribed to foreign policies pursuing economic independence from the capitalist great
powers, most notably the United States and the United Kingdom. Although they championed
multi-class, non socialist societies, their foreign policies implicitly supported the
Soviet Bloc more often than not,20 in sharp contrast to the predominantly
middle class outlook which the ANC later began to assume during the 1980s.

After 1961, and the turn to armed struggle supported now also by the
Soviet Bloc, the ANC continued its hostility towards American and British imperialism.
Likewise, it continued to support Afro-Asian non alignment,21 now qualified, of
course, by the movement's new dependence on Bloc military support. The issue of guerrilla
warfare was itself interpreted as a natural evolution of 1950s ANC policy. It was argued
that the Freedom Charter had itself, after all, provided a revolutionary long term policy.
The ANC and its allies were thus simply carrying out this revolution by armed struggle —
the only way possible, in view of the Nationalist government's own unyielding attitude.22

This thesis of continuity between the formulation of the Freedom Charter
and post 1961 policy can further be illustrated. For ex-ample, Joe Slovo, who played a key
role in writing the Freedom Charter, would subsequently be appointed by the SACP in 1961
to set up the MK guerrilla organisation. Slovo’s ANC counterpart in setting up MK,
Nelson Mandela,23 had likewise been involved in writing the Freedom Charter24
and had written an authoritative com-mentary on the Charter, shortly after its original
appear-ance.25 Likewise, the ANC's policy of nationalising major industries, as
outlined in the Freedom Charter, would continue after 1961.26

Only with the 1979 Green Book, committed to redirecting guerrilla warfare
to the townships, would the Freedom Charter’s multi-class outlook begin to be
questioned. The embryonic concept of what would, four years later become known as the UDF
can already be found in the Green Book's appeal for the creation of legal and semi-legal
organisations, leading to a broad national “popular front”.27 The UDF,
itself, would encourage mass participation, regardless of any particular ideological
outlook. Prospective members were expected only to subscribe to a national liberation
struggle opposing white domination, and to seek a unified state based on the principles of
equal and universal suffrage.28 It has often been assumed that the UDF directly
supported the Freedom Charter, but did not dogmatically impose it,29 or,
alternatively, that the UDF was “non-ideological,” avoiding controversial aims for the
sake of unity and mass mobilisation.30 It can, however, be argued that this
spirit of “compromise” itself indicated a sign of a new ideological outlook at
variance with the Freedom Charter, and thus a retreat from confrontation with large scale
domestic, as well as with international capitalism.

The UDF in fact was subscribing to a predominantly urban middle class,
petty bourgeois agenda, rather than simply pursuing “a fundamentally non-ideological
target of strategic unity”.31 The UDF's leadership, for example, like that of
the civics, consisted mostly of professionals, white collar workers, and students. Much
less represented were busi-ness people or industrial workers.32 To be sure, the
UDF was hardly closed to business people, as indicated by the subsequent affiliation of
the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce (NAFCOC) in 1985.33 Many
members of the UDF, of course, appear to have professed a strong preference for socialism.34
Yet this must have reflected an ideal rather than an expectation in practice. Indeed, none
of the major independent unions within the Federation of South African Trade Unions
(FOSATU) ever seem to have joined the UDF. In similar fashion, the Congreess of South
African Trade Unions (COSATU), would commit itself, from 1985, to a similar policy of non
partici-pation in the UDF.35 For their part, the UDF and the civics were active
in the townships rather than in the factories.36

The decline of apartheid, as reflected in the removal of homeland controls
over the townships from 1975, therefore, was removing controls over two apparently
incompatible interests. On the one hand, black business and the black middle classes in
general, were gradually able to benefit from the removal of apartheid restrictions to
black com-mercial activity37 as well as gain local political represen-tation,
at first through community councils38 and then through township civic
associations. On the other hand, the ANC, through these same civic organisations and
ultimately through its legal counterpart, the UDF, was rapidly acquiring political
hegemony in the townships. While this meant the radicalisation of the township middle
classes, it also would mean the gradual identification of the ANC primarily with these
same middle classes, and only secondarily with the poor or with organised labour — in
effect a moving away from the multiclass ideals of the Freedom Charter.

This increasingly capitalist-oriented direction of the ANC, as already
suggested, could not but have important implica-tions as to the ANC's ties with the
outside world. Any im-proved ties with the West after all, could only be at the expense of
the very close ties developed with the Soviet Bloc during the previous twenty years. And
yet, as we shall see, Moscow, by the early 1980s was itself having second thoughts about
the desirability of continuing its extensive commitments to Third World regions such as
southern Africa.

4.Southern Africa and Soviet economic decline (1975-1985)

Like South Africa, the Soviet Union, itself appears to have begun a long
term economic decline from about 1975, falling from its previous (1960-1975) growth rates
by some 50%.39 Simultaneously, there occurred a general world economic
stagnation, itself aggravated by sharply rising oil prices from 1973. This in itself
should have acted as a stimulus to the Soviet economy, itself to a considerable degree
dependant on oil exports. The fact that even this advantage was not enough to prevent the
Soviet economy's further decline40 confirms again the severity and long term
character of that decline. Similarly, while South Africa was affected by the world
economic decline of the 1970s, that, in itself could not have been her main problem. Not
only did the rise of gold during that period act as a partial compensation, but South
Africa’s decline, like the USSR's, would continue even after the end of the world
recession, around 1982.

A more fundamental cause of decline, in the Soviet Union in particular,
although probably, to a lesser degree in South Africa as well, was to be found not so much
in the challenges posed by world economic stagnation, but, ironically, in the challenges
of economic growth. A heavily bureaucratised society and command economy such as the USSR
could not easily adapt to the new technology of electronics, beginning to seriously
penetrate the international business world during the late 1960s and 1970s. “It was
possible to command the replication of steel mills, based on a known technology, in the
1930s; it was not possible to order into existence a computer industry, based on a new and
rapidly evolving technology, in the 1970s”.41

Both the Soviet Union and Apartheid South Africa were in fact faced with
the dilemma of removing bureaucratised political controls so as to adapt to a market
economy. Only such an economy would be flexible enough to cope with the new electronics
technology in which increasingly rapid innovation was no longer the exception but the rule
and which therefore defied any further attempts at central planning. However, while South
Africa, did face the necessity of dismantling apartheid, apartheid controlled only a part
of her economy, almost “coexisting” with the free market sector. Because prospects of
reform were less total and therefore, less daunting, reform could begin more easily and
did so, as we have seen, already beginning from the mid 1970s.

On the other hand, because prospects of Soviet reform were so far reaching
and thus so demanding and risky,42 fundamental reforms there were postponed and
did not get under way for a further ten years. In the meantime, however, a serious
reevaluation of foreign policy objectives, particularly in the direction of reducing
economic and military commitments towards Africa and other Third World countries, would
begin, as if to pave the way for more basic, internal reforms later on. This might help
explain why the ANC’s own ideological concessions to capitalism already during the early
1980s do not appear to have met any resistance from Moscow.

The ANC’s reinterpretation of the Freedom Charter from 1979 was
paralleled, albeit on a far broader scale, during this same period, by a reevaluation in
Soviet circles of the theory of the “National Democratic State”. This theory had
originally evolved during the second half of the 1950s to justify the USSR’s suddenly
increased interest in supporting anti imperialist national movements in the Third World.
Like the Freedom Charter, it particularly emphasised the expulsion of foreign
multinationals from Third World national economies.43 By the early 1980s, this
theory was falling increasingly under criticism.

It has been suggested that one major cause of this reassessment, along
with increasing problems in the Soviet economy, was due to the USSR's recent
disappointments in the Third World, particularly the rise of anti Soviet Moslem
fundamentalism in Iran and Afghanistan during this period.44 In fact, the two
concerns were interrelated and reinforced each other. Mounting domestic economic problems
would in any case reduce Soviet tolerance for any setbacks overseas, while, in the long
run, the unsuccessful war in Afghanistan would greatly compound domestic economic
problems. Both concerns would serve increasingly to call into question the wisdom of
continued involvement in Third World national liberation movements in general, including
also those in Southern Africa.

The first official high level indication of this general reassess-ment of
Soviet relations with the Third World was made by Leonid Brezhnev’s immediate successor
as General Secretary, Iurii Andropov, in 1983 emphasised that Third World
“socialist-oriented” regimes had to view Soviet aid as only secondary and rely
primarily on their own economic efforts.45 An obvious corollary of this new
policy was also to accept the fact that, as a result, many Third World states, including
the more politically radical ones, would have to maintain their ties with the
international capitalist world order, and accept the necessity of foreign capitalist
investment.46 Within this context, the increasing tendency of the ANC (and UDF)
to identify predominantly with the township middle classes, during the early 1980s, was
obviously in step with the new outlook of the Soviet Union itself and thus could only be
condoned by the Soviet Bloc.

A former Soviet African specialist, A. Makarov,47 looking back
to this period of the early 1980s, emphasised what he saw as a shift from an
“ideological” Soviet world view of confrontation between socialism and capitalism to a
more pragmatic, international “non-ideological” position — in particular concerning
Africa.48 He revealingly pointed to this transformation as having occurred
“on the border line between the 1970s and 1980s”.49 In fact, what he
described illustrates only too well the shift in policy, by both the ANC and the Soviet
Union, from Afrocentrism to Eurocentrism.

Ultimately, of course, the South African industrial
economy depended on its mining sector, developed already during the late nineteenth
century. Manufacturing, itself, would remain dependent upon mining as a source of foreign
exchange, and thus be controlled by the mining interests. See, for example, J.Nattrass, The
South African economy: Its growth and change (Cape Town, 1981), 143-148, 270;
D.Yudelman, The emergence of modern South Africa: State, capital and the incorporation
of organized labor on the South African goldfields, 1902-1939 (Cape Town, 1984), 242,
276-278, 284; B.Fine and Z.Rustomjee, The political economy of South Africa: From
minerals-energy complex to industrialisation (Johannesburg, 1996), 5, 8-9, 71-118.

For further discussion, see PG Eidelberg, “Guerrilla
warfare and the decline of urban apartheid: the shaping of a new African middle class and
the transformation of the African National Congress (1975-1985),” Comparative Studies
of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, forthcoming.

6

Maylam, “Rise and Decline,” 70-73, 79.

7

On this, see D.Hindson, Pass Controls and the Urban
African Proletariat (Johannesburg, 1987), 4-6; T. Moll, “ 'Probably the best laager
in the world': the record and prospects of the South African economy,” in J. Brewer,
ed., Can South Africa survive? Five minutes to midnight (Bergvlei, 1989), 146-147,
153; Idem, “From booster to brake? Apartheid and economic growth in perspective,” in
N. Nattrass and E. Ardington, eds., The political economy of South Africa (Cape
Town, 1990), 78-79; Idem, “Output and productivity trends in South Africa: apartheid and
economic growth” (PhD, University of Cambridge, 1990), 8, 11-12; Idem, “Did the
apartheid economy 'fail'?”, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2
(June, 1991), 285-287, 290-291.

V.Shubin, The Soviet Union/Russian Federation's
relations with South Africa, with special reference to the period since 1980,” African
Affairs, 95, 378 (Jan., 1996), 5; Idem, ANC: A view from Moscow (Bellville,
1999), 39-43. See also N. Mandela's own role in this, during early 1962: “Statement
during the Rivonia trial, by Nelson R. Mandela,April 20, 1964,” in Karis and Carter,
eds., From protest to challenge: a documentary history of African politics in South
Africa, 1882-1964, Vol. 3: T. Karis and G. Gerhart, eds. Challenge and violence,
1953-1964 (Stanford, 1977), 792.

P.Hudson, “Images of the future and strategies in the
present: the Freedom Charter and the South African Left,” in P. Frankel, N. Pines and M.
Swilling, eds., State, resistance and change in South Africa (Johannesburg, 1988),
263-267, 270; Idem, “Freedom Charter,” 20, 29.

South African Communist Party (SACP), The Road to
South African Freedom (London, 1981), 9, 11, 13, 17, 26-27, 42-44; “Strategy and
tactics of the South African revolution (A political report adopted by the consultative
conference of the ANC at the Morogoro conference, Tanzania, May, 1969),” in A. La Guma,
ed., Apartheid: a collection of writings on South African racism by South Africans
(New York, 1971), 191.